Mafiacraft An Ethnography of Deadly Silence

"The Mafia? What is the Mafia? Something you eat? Something you drink? I don't know the Mafia. I've never seen it." Mafiosi have often reacted this way to questions from journalists and law enforcement. Social scientists who study the Mafia usually try to pin down what it "r...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Puccio-Den, Deborah
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: HAU Books 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: OAPEN - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
LEADER 02034nma a2200253 u 4500
001 EB002062644
003 EBX01000000000000001203755
005 00000000000000.0
007 cr|||||||||||||||||||||
008 220825 ||| eng
020 |a 9781912808496 
100 1 |a Puccio-Den, Deborah 
245 0 0 |a Mafiacraft  |h Elektronische Ressource  |b An Ethnography of Deadly Silence 
260 |b HAU Books  |c 2021 
653 |a Sociology 
653 |a Sociology 
653 |a Social Science 
041 0 7 |a eng  |2 ISO 639-2 
989 |b OAPEN  |a OAPEN 
500 |a Creative Commons (cc), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode 
856 4 0 |u https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/f87aa969-61e7-4ec3-add6-89b170bf8590/external_content.pdf  |x Verlag  |3 Volltext 
856 4 2 |u https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/51524  |z OAPEN Library: description of the publication 
082 0 |a 300 
520 |a "The Mafia? What is the Mafia? Something you eat? Something you drink? I don't know the Mafia. I've never seen it." Mafiosi have often reacted this way to questions from journalists and law enforcement. Social scientists who study the Mafia usually try to pin down what it "really is," thus fusing their work with their object. In Mafiacraft, Deborah Puccio-Den undertakes a new form of ethnographic inquiry that focuses not on answering "What is the Mafia?" but on the ontological, moral, and political effects of posing the question itself. Her starting point is that Mafia is not a readily nameable social fact but a problem of thought produced by the absence of words. Puccio-Den approaches covert activities using a model of "Mafiacraft," which inverts the logic of witchcraft. If witchcraft revolves on the lethal power of speech, Mafiacraft depends on the deadly strength of silence. How do we write an ethnography of phenomena that cannot be named? Puccio-Den approaches this task with a fascinating anthropology of silence, breaking new ground for the study of the world’s most famous criminal organization.